Adams’s works, an engrossing operatic drama, even though very little happens. Once again “Doctor Atomic” came across as the most complex and inventive of Mr. Robert Oppenheimer, who presided over the Manhattan Project to build the first atomic bombs - needed some tweaking. Yet even among the work’s champions, the consensus was that this ambitious opera - about the physicist J. Advantage Julius Caesar.Īnthony Tomasini at The New York Times is being kind:ĬHICAGO - John Adams’s “Doctor Atomic” enjoyed a major success during its premiere production two years ago at the San Francisco Opera. Handicapping the season so far: Julius Caesar, Die Frau ohne Schatten, La Traviata, La bohème, Doctor Atomic. As it is it’s the weakest opera we’ve seen this season.
I think that the opera, stripped of its weak libretto, minus the home scenes, and trimmed to an economical hour and a half rather than its present total running length of three hours would make a dynamite ballet. It is weakest in the scenes dealing with Oppenheimer’s personal life. The events are dramatic enough on their own and quite suitable for opera in which everything is larger than life. The opera is strongest when dealing straightforwardly with the events surrounding the development of the atomic bomband its first test. I liked the staging and production design. I found the whole of the libretto much less than the sum of its parts. You either have something to say or you don’t and I don’t honestly think that Sellars had much to say. They aren’t mutually reinforcing and it sounded very much to me as though Sellars were striving for profundity. It includes historical material like journal entries and interviews with the actual people, 20th century poetry, John Donne’s metaphysical sonnets, and the Bhagavad-Gita. The libretto is eclectic, too, and IMO that’s its problem. You probably won’t go out of the opera house humming the themes. It’s occasionally quite affecting and at others has a repetitive, dizzying effect not unlike a Bernard Herrman score of a Hitchcock movie. The music includes influences of 20th century classical music, jazz, popular music, traditional music, recorded sounds, and electronic instruments. It’s basically a modern opera of the continuous melody variety i.e. Robert Oppenheimer.ĭoctor Atomic’s music is quite eclectic. The opera revolves around the events leading up to the first test of an atom bomb in 1945, focusing on the Manhattan Project’s director, J. It was written and directed by Peter Sellars. It’s not that she doesn’t like modern opera, indeed, she generally likes it more than I do.ĭoctor Atomic was composed by John Adams who wrote the much-acclaimed Nixon in China. My wife hated it I though it was, barely, okay. Every couple of seasons there’s an opera about which my wife and I disagree and Doctor Atomic seems to be it for this season. Last night my wife and I saw Doctor Atomic at Chicago Lyric Opera as part of our regular subscription. Is there a word for the opposite of synergy, the condition of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts? ∺ntagonism doesn’t quite do it.
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